Can ‘Super 8′ Keep Its Numbers Up?

While the new sci-fi thriller from director J.J. Abrams (“Lost,” “Star Trek”) and producer Steven Spielberg has proven its naysayers wrong initially, earning a better than expected $37 million from Friday to Sunday, the film is hardly a major summer blockbuster—at least, not yet.

Some industry observers are championing the moderately strong sales as evidence that an original non-sequel can still draw audiences into theaters, with a little help from good buzz, solid reviews and a creative team with a consistent track record.

“$37 million is NOT a blockbuster opening, particularly for this type of movie,” Gray writes in an email. “The opening was neither good nor bad, it was a decent sampling.”

Gray also suggests the film’s significant marketing push—with ads during the Super Bowl, American Idol and the MTV Movie Awards—was comparable to any major Hollywood release. “A Spielberg-produced movie aiming to emulate his blockbusters from a few decades ago should have high expectations,” he states.

Paramount executives were not available to comment, but the studio offered one instructive comparison to measure the film’s first-weekend results: the opening of “District 9,” which made a very similar $37.4 million over its opening weekend in 2009. But that movie’s success came about after a long and healthy 12-week release, driven by positive worth of mouth. The same goes for other comparable hits, such as “Cloverfield,” which Abrams produced and also opened to around $40 million and ended up doubling that in overall grosses, and Spielberg’s “Minority Report,” which had a $35.7 million debut, but then went on to play robustly for 19 weeks.

So while “Super 8″ may have overcome lowered first weekend expectations, proof of the film’s strength will ultimately be judged over the coming weeks.

As Gray says, “Paramount and others insist that this movie is about word-of-mouth playability, so let’s see where they take it from here. How well ‘Super 8′ holds will determine if it’s a success or not.”